Two Friends That Want To Hear Your Story

What happens when a storyteller becomes friends with a graphic designer? Unlock My Story is the vision of two lifelong friends that each bring their complementary skills to the design table to help clients unlock and tell their life stories.

Together we create visual memoirs of your cherished memories, stories, photos and keepsakes. Our goal is to provide you with a visually stunning and engaging book that is worthy of your unique story… something you will cherish and pass from this generation to the next, preserving your family stories and memories along the way. We work with you to scope a project. Then, we create custom questions just for you, conduct interviews, design a book using your images and professionally publish the finished book… a bound book that contains the life story of you or someone that you love.

A Little About Us

Cindy’s Story

How did I find myself here at Unlock My Story designing memoirs? I’m a visual learner. Tell me a story and I’m busy visualizing, much like a slide projector, flipping images of your story in my brain.

From an early age, I knew I was meant to lead a creative life. However, I wasn’t sure how to get a real job doing so. Luckily, while at college I met my first Mac. I was instantly hooked. Here was a way to get the slide show in my head printed out to share with others. College led to a great career as a graphic designer. I have happily worked for several companies designing packaging, brochures and signage for almost two decades.

As my design skills grew, I also became the keeper of my family history: always taking pictures of my husband, kids, extended family and friends, creating art with the images. I made large family trees and framed them as gifts. I created photo books of travel and school years. I loved capturing our family history and bringing it visually to life.

Then, one day my path led to a job at a telecom company. There I met 3 extraordinary women who I plan to call my closest friends for as long as life lets me. Cornelia was one of them. A few years ago, Cornelia tells me of her idea: an idea that has been in her journals for 5 years. It was a no brainer. Unlock My Story came to life.

My goal is to make your book beautiful, something to love and share with your family and friends. I hope that your visual memoir will become a treasured keepsake.

Cornelia’s Story

Where did my passion for capturing stories come from? Growing up, I spent most weekends during the summer at the beach. When I wasn’t building sandcastles, I was listening to my aunts, uncles and parents tell stories about how our family came to America.

It wasn’t long before I started asking questions, which fueled my curiosity to hear even more family stories. By high school, I realized that the stories, photos and keepsakes from my family were precious gifts that carried powerful life lessons. I just didn’t have the skills yet to capture and share them. That would come later.

It’s not surprising that when I grew up I gravitated towards a career that combined my curiosity about people with my passion for stories. For 20+ years I’ve worked in the market research field helping diverse companies from start-ups to technology giants better understand their customers. Market research also became my training ground to develop the skills I needed to tell my family stories.

Now I’ve come full circle by having the opportunity to apply my years of research and visual storytelling experience to help others capture and share their stories. I believe everyone has a unique story to tell and it should be shared.

We hope you’ll contact us whenever you are ready to begin the journey to capture your life stories. If you’d like to stay updated on Unlock My Story happenings, just sign up for our RSS feed or “like us” on our Facebook page. Either way, we’ll keep you up to date on what’s new at Unlock My Story.

Enjoy exploring the site and let us know if we can answer any questions.

unlock my story llc

117 South Cook Street #133
Barrington, IL 60010

About Us

Unlock My Story LLC is the vision of two lifelong friends that each bring their complementary skills to the design table to help clients unlock and tell their life stories. Together we create visual memoirs of your cherished memories, stories, photos and keepsakes.